Simulations of Phenotypic Evolution in a Mutualistic System

Serrapilheira/ICTP-SAIFR Training Program in Quantitative Biology and Ecology

Theoretical basis

In the contextualization of classical models of sympatric speciation at the ecological community level, with consideration of the antagonistic or synergistic effects of other selective pressures imposed by different ecological interactions, this is a step in the investigation of the interaction of different modes of natural selection in the origin of biodiversity. So, how does the phenotypic evolution behave under the interplay of natural and sexual selection, generated by directional mate choice, in a mutualistic system?

Goal

To identify scenarios in which speciation is plausible as a result of the joint action of natural and sexual selection. For this, we investigated how the incorporation of the directional mating pattern and different degrees of genetic correlation in the course of speciation and adaptive diversification processes, primarily generated by frequency-dependent intraspecific competition in the context of coevolutionary systems defined by mutualistic interspecific interactions, which occur between a pair of species.

Methods

We modified the adaptive diversification model by Raimundo et al. (2014) with a directional mating choice. The model simulates a life cycle of two interacting species (A and B), during this they experienced intraspecific competition, mutualism, reproduction and death, with no overlap of generations. The reproduction of species A is assortative and the species B is based on directional mating choice to see differences between the original model -- in which both species copulate via assortative mating. To run the simulations were used the packages: MASS dplyr tidyr plyr

Outputs

The dataset generated by the simulations contains the ids, ecological traits, sex traits (op), sex, species, fathers and mothers of each species (A and B) for 1000 generations.

Figure 1. Shows the phenotypic evolution of the traits of species A and B during 800 generations with different genetic architectures (magic trait and genetic correlation).

Project structure

project/
*    ├── docs/
*    ├── fct/
*    ├── figs/
*    ├── R/
*    ├── output/
*    └── README.md

• The docs file contains the report (markdown and pdf file) and .Bib file.

• The fct file contains the R function to run the simulations.

• The figs file contains the figures obtained from simulations showing the phenotypic evolution.

• The outputs file contains the outputs generated from the script.

• The R file contains the R script to run the simulations.